You can use the enhanced cropping tools to trim and efficiently remove unwanted portions of pictures to get the look that you want. Cropping removes or masks areas of a picture by reducing the vertical or horizontal edges. Cropping is often used to hide or trim part of a picture, either for emphasis or to remove unwanted portions.
 | Note If you crop an
animated GIFA file that contains a series of GIF images that are displayed in rapid sequence by some Web browsers to produce an animated effect.
picture by using the crop tool  , the animation does not play and only the initial frame of the animation appears. To keep the animation, make your changes in an animated GIF editing program, and then insert the file into your document again. |
Do any of the following:
 | Crop a picture |
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Click the picture that you want to crop, and then click the Format Picture tab.
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Under Adjust, click Crop, drag the cropping handles to where you want them, and then click outside the picture.
 | Tip You can position the crop by moving either the crop area (by dragging the edges of the crop rectangle), or the picture. |
| Crop to a specific shape |
A quick way to change the shape of the picture is to crop it to a specific shape. When you crop to a specific shape, the picture is automatically trimmed to fill the geometry of the shape. The proportions of the picture are maintained.
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Click the picture that you want to crop to a specific shape, and then click the Format Picture tab.
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Under Adjust, click the arrow next to Crop, point to Mask to Shape, point to a type of shape, and then click the shape that you want to crop the picture to.
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When you are finished, click outside the picture.
| Crop to fit or fill a shape |
To remove part of the picture, but still fill the shape with as much of the picture as possible, choose Crop to Fill. When you choose this option, some edges of the picture might not display. If you want to make all of the picture fit within the shape, choose Crop to Fit. The original picture aspect ratio is maintained.
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Click the picture that you want to crop to a specific shape, and then click the Format Picture tab.
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Under Adjust, click the arrow next to Crop, click Crop to Fill or Crop to Fit, and then click outside the picture.
| Delete cropped areas of a picture |
Even after you crop parts of a picture, the cropped parts remain as part of the picture file. You can reduce the file size by removing the cropping from the picture file. It is also a good idea to do this to help prevent other people from viewing the parts of the picture that you have removed.
Important
Deleting cropped areas of a picture cannot be undone. Therefore, you should only do this after you are sure that you have made all the crops and changes that you want.
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Click the picture or pictures that you want to discard unwanted information from, and then click the Format Picture tab.
| Note To click more than one picture, hold down
SHIFT, and then click the pictures that you want. |
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Under Adjust, click Compress, and then select the Remove cropped picture regions check box.
